Sadly Over-hyped

Purely Joyful Movie!

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

A female Japanese assassin, reluctantly working for Hong Kong drug smugglers, falls in love with the brother of the woman running the cartel. After the assassin has killed the two informants in police protection that she came to Hong Kong to eliminate, the crime lords who hired her decide she is expendable for some reason and waste vast numbers of loyal incompetent goons trying to kill her. Meanwhile, the police want to arrest her. How and why they decided she is the killer is not made very clear in the UK VHS version I just watched - it was cut by 2m 37s by the BBFC, though I doubt if they would have cut exposition. Though it might explain how the villainess just dies between shots in the final scene while the heroine simultaneously looses an article of clothing.A lot of the dialogue is delivered. With very. Long Pauses. Between Phrases By. The Voice. Overactors.Some brief nudity, a nice bit of business with some revolving panels at one point, and the heroine jumps over a speeding car, but nothing much to bother staying awake for. There is one moment which will stay with me though. The moment where a car crashes into a wall at the end of an alley. The wall is, from the moment it appears on screen, obviously made from real bricks but just stacked one on top of another. No cement. It looks terrible. It must have taken hours and hours to pile all those bricks. The resulting stunt crash is totally unspectacular. There is a reason why cars crash into piles of cardboard boxes in American films. They fly all over the place. And fill the screen. Do it for real and it looks like nothing.Overall. A very cheap looking, very static, sock choppy with some terrible dubbing. Very little Ninjing. Nothing apocalyptic.